Abstract
The potential impact of environmental change on terrestrial Antarctic ecosystems can be explored by inspecting biodiversity patterns across large-scale gradients. Unfortunately, morphology-based surveys of Antarctic invertebrates are time-consuming and limited by the cryptic nature of many taxa. We used biodiversity information derived from high-throughput sequencing (HTS) to elucidate the relationship between soil properties and invertebrate biodiversity in the Prince Charles Mountains, East Antarctica. Across 136 analysed soil samples collected from Mount Menzies, Mawson Escarpment and Lake Terrasovoje, we found invertebrate distribution in the Prince Charles Mountains significantly influenced by soil salinity and/or sulfur content. Phyla Tardigrada and Arachnida occurred predominantly in low-salinity substrates with abundant nutrients, whereas Bdelloidea (Rotifera) and Chromadorea (Nematoda) were more common in highly saline substrates. A significant correlation between invertebrate occurrence, soil salinity and time since deglaciation indicates that terrain age indirectly influences Antarctic terrestrial biodiversity, with more recently deglaciated areas supporting greater diversity. Our study demonstrates the value of HTS metabarcoding to investigate environmental constraints on inconspicuous soil biodiversity across large spatial scales.
Highlights
There is an urgent need for information about Antarctic terrestrial biodiversity and the relationship with environmental constraints in order to predict the effects of anticipated human-mediated environmental change on Antarctic biota [1] and for successful conservation management [2,3]
We provide a detailed analysis of the environmental determinants for the four predominant Antarctic invertebrate phyla across a much larger spatial scale in the Prince Charles Mountains (PCMs) using multivariate statistics
We initially characterized the spatial variation of soil geochemical and mineral composition in the PCMs. By combining this environmental predictor data with high-throughput sequencing (HTS) information of 18S rDNA, we show that the distribution of invertebrates in the PCMs is strongly influenced by salinity measured as electrical conductivity and sulfur content, which are themselves correlated with terrain age
Summary
There is an urgent need for information about Antarctic terrestrial biodiversity and the relationship with environmental constraints in order to predict the effects of anticipated human-mediated environmental change on Antarctic biota [1] and for successful conservation management [2,3]. It has previously been suggested that the large-scale distributions of most Antarctic terrestrial fauna are determined by geo-glaciological events and the presence of past refugia rather than latitudinal variations in climatic and environmental conditions [9]. A multivariate statistical approach linking many environmental variables to all major Antarctic invertebrates could be used to elucidate whether the broader distribution of Antarctic invertebrate taxa is strongly influenced by past geo-glaciological events or rather is correlated with environmental constraints as observed at small spatial scales
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